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The Anarchives Volume 2 Issue 24
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--/\-- WIRED
/ / \ \ Propaganda
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\/ \/ mind-fodder
/\______/\ for the digital age
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In the previous industrial age, the New York Times represented the voice
of history, and the keeper of the record. In many ways however, the New
York Times was also an agent of change, an active participant in the
proccess of 'engineering consent' and promoting progress.
With the advent of the 'digital' era, WIRED magazine jockeyes on the
leading edge of the electronic frontier, eager to become the 'official
record' of tomorrow, sponsored by the conglomerates of today.
>From WIRED Magazine, JAN 96, Channeling McLuhan
"For it has always been the role of intelligentsia to act as liaison and
as mediators between old and new power groups." Mcluhan, Understanding Media
pp. 37
WIRED magazine evokes the ghost of McLuhan to prophesize on our times.
Explaining their legitimacy as corporate crusaders for McLuhan, WIRED
magazine positions itself as the leading propagandists of the
technological revolution.
Their Jan 1996 issue features the eyes of McLuhan, and even, the words of
the so-called 'saint'. Their flare of layout and design juxtaposes a
biography that leaves the dead to lie, and an interview that resurrects
their holy authority.
The McLuhan of the book is bumped into the flaming waste bin of history,
and the virtual McLuhan who can give us fresh insight to this day is
alive and well in Silicon Valley.
First let's look at the biography: (which has 2 pages around 131 then
jumps to three pages after 182)
"The current idea of a global village as a place of universal harmony and
industrious basket-weaving is a tourist's fantasy." (pp. 182)
the biography is the most puzzling as it lays the ground work for the
'WIRED' interview. as per any trash/ad magazine the articles are short
and full of loaded sound bites.
"We are the content of our media. Each medium delivers a new form of
human being, whose qualitites are suited to it." (pp. 182)
witness the justification of exploitation by defining it as a function.
the prose begins to smell, but this is only the beginning.
a twisted interplay of words is occurring here.
"Print is hot. Television is cool. Mechanical tools are hot. Hand-wrought
tools and software are cool. Hot media encourage passive consumption.
Cool media encourage active participation.
Sometimes." (pp. 182)
they're trying to tell you that tv is participatory and active, software
too, when you get drawn into virtual worlds of make believe, this is
active participation.
you can make your destiny when you immerse yourself more.
"strange new voices of power will appear unexpectedly." (pp. 184)
the landscape becomes fertile for the introduction of the thesis.
virtual McLuhan is going to lay down the facts...
"'I've never read McLuhan but...'
Why don't we read Marshal Mcluhan today? Although trained as a highly
specialized bookman and supported by an academic sineure, McLuhan did
little to guarantee his influence as a writer and scholar. From his
earliest career, he ignored his peeers. He wrote few books, and the ones
he did write grew progressively more difficult. He did not train many
graduate students who might have sustained his legacy. McLuhan treated
his teaching responsibilities casualy, his publishing commitments with
utter disregard." (pp. 186)
before bringing on the virtual mcluhan, WIRED must discredit the literary
one, as well as any other literary thinkers who come after him, WIRED
must declare the literary tradition/culture of McLuhan dead.
"In a fashionably self-destructive manner, McLuhan signed his name to
material he never wrote. Even after death, this practice continues. The
Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st
Century, co-written with Bruce Powers, was published in 1989 by the
Oxford University Press, nine years after McLuhan's death." (pp. 186)
They even have to denounce one of the more radical McLuhan books as
heresy, and not on the level with their virtual McLuhan.
As WIRED magazine becomes the New York Times for the techno-corporate
class, history must be constructed to allow the future unfold as desired.
"To some who venture from the slogans to the books, McLuhan will seem
outdated, especially in his hope for a human engagement with media that
goes byond technological idiocy and numb submission."
And this becomes the summation of the biography piece. Immerse yourself
into your television, into your virtual world, and you will be active and
participating, you will be a brave frontiersperson.
What McLuhan really said is just not important.
So now listen to what virtual mcluhan has to say:
mcluhan speaks:
"The real message today is ubiquity. It is no longer something we do, but
something we are part of. It confronts us as if from the outside with all
the sensory experience of the history of humanity. It is as if we have
amputated not our ears or our eyes, but ourselves, and then established a
total prosthesis - an automation - in our place." (pp. 129)
let's do a case study in the meaning of these words:
ubiquity - the state, fact, or capacity of being everywhere at the same
time; omnipresence.
furthermore, automated ubiquity.
we are a machine that is everywhere...
"The medium is the message because it creates the audience most suited to
it. Electronic media create an audience whose shifting moods are as
impersonal as the weather." (pp. 129)
electronic media create a machine that is everywhere,
impersonal and unpredictable.
yet created by technology owned and controled by a small few.
"This emphasis on misfortune would have been appreciated by advertisers,
since they need a big dose of 'bad news' in all programs in order to
balance the 'good news' in the ads. If TV actually were to broadcast more
good news, as some cultural reactionaries want, the advertising market
would collapse, and the ensuing economic crisis would probably lead to
some sort of popular dictatorship, which they do not want." (pp. 130)
when tv broadcasts good news it will be advertising.
what tv should broadcast is the real news.
if broadcast at all.
"TV should be watched, not made." (pp. 131)
at a time of technology enabling wide-spread production,
virtual McLuhan says don't do, consume...
"'What would yo do about the inequality of the technological
haves and have-nots?'"
uh oh, here we go...
"Equality is an industrial ideal, along with voting, time clocks, and the
minimum wage. Machines promote equality; that is their downfall. The
organic unity of pastoral times was replaced in the machine age with
fragmented individuials, who could compete with each other. This unequal
competition gave a foundation to the idea of equality. The industrial age
transformed millions of rural farmers into a mass of workers and mass
consumers. Only by transforming millions of rural farmers into a mass
workers and street riffraff could machines succeed in smearing the
doctrine of equality around the world."
great jefferson, can you believe this guy?
virtual McLuhan is denouncing equality, proclaiming that equality is a
systematic dysfunction, a by-product of old technology.
by doing so he can justify the techno-corporate elite's selfish ambitions
to make to to the top, be the vanguard of the revolutoin.
"The hubbub now about equality is actually a nostalgia for machines. Our
environment has been transformed into a single omnipresent network that
embraces and encompasses individuals of unequal status. Machines - extend
to their limit and transformed into a single omnipresent network
environment - will flip into sacred and ritual environments. Recognized
as an extension of ourselves and properly managed by a priestly class,
technology inspires rituals, performed out of something like love. This
development restores machines to their original totemic purpose. Whereas
Marx recognized machines as 'the dead hand' of the past, the electronic
network could flip this totem (an amputated body part, you'll notice)
into a shrine for ancestors." (pp. 131)
but don't worry says vMcLuhan, new machines will revolutionize old machines.
the new machines are one, ubiquitous, sacred and loving.
only a priestly class can act as intermediaries between the machine and
what remains of humanity.
"In the emerging global village, isn't it imperialistic to expect
everyone to have the same values (ours), obey the same laws (ours), and
communicate in American English?
America is no longer a global power - it's a global brand.
America as a brand stands for liberty, money, and sex. That three-way
combo is hard to beat. Certain countries have successfully transformed
themselves into brands already." (pp. 187)
consumerism will save us all......sell...sell...sell...
"America should take a lesson in global branding. To succeed as a brand,
America should shrink its army, reduce its diplomatic corps, cut back its
public particption in political meetings and summits. This will allow
American products, from movies to soft drinks to computers, to become
far, far more valuable and powerful." (pp. 187)
The key word of course being powerful. Only when the corporate state can
rise to its full power and glory will we all enjoy the great taste of coke.
WIRED and its 'high-colour gloss' primarily filled with ads is eagerly and
opportunisticly jockeying to become the official propagandist for the
techno-corporate elite. If successful the writer of the vMcLuhan
articles, WIRED Executive Editor Kevin Kelly, hopes to himself rise in
the ranks of the Wired Elite.
"McLuhan was such an "historical energizer." His utopian vision of
technological society provided the corporate leadership of the American
empire with a sense of historical destiny; and, at least, with the
passing illusion that their narrow-minded concentration on the 'business
of technology might make of them the "atlas" of the new world of cosmic
man." Kroker pp. 83-4
our words will wage our battles for liberation,
our hearts will ring the truth out of our words.
semiological guerrila warfare from the
tao properganja center
http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/
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